The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel #3)(69)

“How?”

His gaze remained transfixed on his fingers, a hairsbreadth from her cheek. “First, he turned them into doves.”

Her breath caught, and he looked at her then, as though he knew what she was thinking. She, too, had been turned into a dove. And it hadn’t been enough to hide from him. But he did not know Sera had been a dove once.

“But finding his dove was no challenge for Orion, not even blind. Not even heartsick. He knew her song.”

It meant nothing. It was a story.

“What’s more, as a dove, Merope was all anguish. Doves, you see, mate for life. And so in asking for her to be saved from a lifetime with a mortal, Artemis had submitted her acolyte to the worst kind of pain—the pain of longing for her match. Orion knew this, and he did not rest, refusing to stop searching for her. He traveled to the ends of the earth to find her. To love her.” He watched her in silence, and a long moment passed before he said, “And he did.”

Her breath was shallow and uncomfortable, Malcolm had never found her. He’d never looked for her. She’d found him. It had been her on the floor of Parliament, no longer a dove in search of a mate, but a sparrow in search of her freedom.

“What happened?” she asked.

“He nearly had her. They were nearly reunited.”

Sadness coursed through her. “Not enough.”

His fingers finally, finally settled like a kiss on her cheek. Light and perfect and gone. “Never cross a goddess. Artemis returned to Zeus.”

Sera exhaled, hating the way she missed that barely-there, barely-happened touch. “Damn Zeus.”

“Zeus gave Artemis her wish.”

“But not in the way anyone wanted.”

He turned away. “Not in the way they wanted, certainly.” He stepped into the dark room beyond, and Sera followed as though on a string, desperate for the end of the story. He crossed the room, torch in hand, pool of light following him, keeping him safe from the darkness beyond. The darkness that consumed her.

“Merope was not destined to marry a god, but Zeus placed her in the heavens nonetheless, alongside her sisters.” The words echoed in the room, instantly unsettling her with their great, hollow sound reverberating against the walls. She turned in a full circle, looking up, disconcerted by her inability to place herself in space.

“Fixed to the firmament.”

She looked toward him, and saw two of him, his back to her and his reflection in the wall of the room on the far side. It was a massive mirror. A dome of mirrors. She looked up. She watched him in the mirror, his eyes black as he lifted his flame to light another torch on the far side of the room.

“And Orion, desperate to be near her, begged to join her.”

He lit another torch on the far side of the room. Not mirrors. Glass. Another. And another, until he finally set his torch in its waiting seat near the door to the room, reflections of light mirrored back and forth around the room, bathing them in the golden glow of each piece of thick, tempered glass, broken by ironwork the likes of which Sera had never seen. On the floor, the missing sister from the gazebo above—Merope, massive and glorious, writhing in stunning mosaic tile.

And beyond the glass, water, made starlit with her husband’s fire.

Haven’s words cut through her astonishment. “So it is that Orion chases her. Forever.”

Sera was consumed in that moment by all the things she should not do. She should not have stayed, but how could she not? At the center of an underwater ballroom, like something out of the myth he’d just whispered to her?

Staying was one thing, however. Moving toward him was quite another. She should not have done that, either. She should have stood her ground on one end of the magnificent space, summoned her sense, and told him, categorically, that he should invite the remaining candidates for her replacement here, to win their hearts and minds. Because certainly, this place was magic enough to do just that to just about anyone.

Which was likely why Sera moved to him, summoned by this place that she’d never imagined. That she could barely imagine now that she stood inside it, intoxicated by its magnificence.

She resisted the idea of showing the others this place, hated the thought of their sharing it with him, hated the idea of them seeing this version of him, manipulating water and air with his strength and purpose. Strength and purpose that had intoxicated her before. That intoxicated her still.

She stopped mere inches from him. Close enough that if he wished to, he could reach out and take her into his arms. If she wished to, she could reach out. Take him. Not that she wanted to.

Liar.

She shook her head. “This place . . .”

She did not have the words for what this place did to her. What his words had done to her. This room was myth made flesh, sticking her in the firmament as surely as if he was Zeus himself. Of course, he wasn’t.

“I built it for you.” The confession was so soft it almost wasn’t there, followed by more, a rush of words he seemed to push out before he could stop himself. “I built it so there would be something for you when you returned. Something . . . new.”

Something that was not weighted down with the past. With what had been lost. Their child. Their future. Sorrow came like a blow and she closed her eyes, letting it wash over here before she took a deep breath and looked up at the magnificent dome, hundreds of black squares of glass reflecting her. Turning her into starlight.